In Search of the Perfect Loaf: A Home Baker's Odyssey (14 page)

By stretching and folding the dough by hand and letting time do its work, Zakowski arrived at a mix of both strong and weaker bonds, and so his breads contained the uneven holes that bakers so often crave. In a high-speed mixer, the weaker gluten chains break apart and stronger ones form, resulting in a more uniform crumb. Industrial operations might also use flour containing bleaching agents or ascorbic acid to forge stronger gluten bonds. This is why artisan bread makers for the most part eschew highly intensive mixers and avoid the additives that are the bane of industrially produced breads. By stretching and folding, Zakowski gradually built up the elastic gluten bonds, but only to a certain point. And, of course, that point—the moment to stop—is a judgment call. It comes only by feeling the dough and, in my case, making a lot of bad bread.

When I asked to join him and shape a few baguettes, I felt a bit of tension, but he let me have a go at it. Two of my loaves made it into the mix, barely; the third came out a bit too long, so he smiled and set it aside after it was baked. In competition baking, baguettes must weigh exactly 250 grams (8.8 ounces) and measure between 55 and 60 centimeters (21.6 to 23.6 inches). The judges don’t compromise on these requirements, and neither does Zakowski. He once made sixty baguettes by hand each day for a few months trying to perfect them. He got good, he told me, but his technique has since gotten better. “The biggest challenge is speed,” Zakowski said, speaking of the competition. “In training, you’re constantly refining the process to make the bread as quickly and as efficiently as possible with the highest quality. And it’s tough because it’s a lot—a lot of product.”

The fire roared in Zakowski’s oven, located outside the shipping container, but then gradually died down. He wrapped a bandana around his face and swept out the ashes, filling the air with dust. Then he mopped out the hearth. Once that was done, the baking was straightforward. He placed the loaves on a canvas loader, and delivered them into the oven. Then he misted the inside with a garden sprayer to create steam, which helped the loaves to spring up. Each successive batch was baked in this way, and within a couple of hours all were done. The bread cooled on gorgeous racks made from the oak wood of recycled wine barrels, then he packed them into birch plywood boxes, which like everything else in his bakery had also been handmade.

From there it was a short one-mile trip in the vintage delivery truck to the farmers’ market, where Zakowski set up his bread stand and pizza oven, complete with an awning. But we had one drawback that day: it rained incessantly, keeping customers away and sales sparse. Luckily for me, it meant I got to bake several
schiacciata
—flatbreads topped with a local hard cheese and seasonal greens—in the mobile pizza oven. They were delicious, especially in the chilly wet weather, but it was still a shame that the foot traffic was so light. “I usually sell out,” Zakowski told me, but not that day. With the rain still pounding, we loaded the unsold loaves back into the truck and drove home.

 • • • 

I
t was a full year later when the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie was finally held at the global baking trade show EuroPain outside Paris in 2012. I made a point to show up, taking the RER commuter rail line from Paris to just outside the airport. The competition itself was held at the far end of the convention center, so I walked by booth after booth of millers, baking equipment manufacturers, bakeries, ingredient makers, and the like, each trying to grab your attention with a baguette, sweet pastry, or blaring music. I kept walking through the vast hall until I reached the back, where a thick crowd of onlookers milled about in front of the competing bread teams. Though bread making isn’t exactly a soccer match, an announcer was on hand, droning on endlessly. Meanwhile, the baking teams worked furiously to produce their breads and pastries, which were paraded in front of the spectators and dissected and tasted by an eminent team of master bakers, clad in white coats and toques, from around the world. I caught Zakowski’s eye and waved, though he barely acknowledged it as he moved at a fast pace, arranging his just-baked loaves in a beautiful display in front of the team’s workspace. I didn’t stick around for the entire competition, since it was difficult to make out just what was going on from a distance, but at the end of the multiday affair, the judges came up with their decision: The U.S. team placed second, just after Japan, and only losing by a few points. Taiwan came in third. It was the first time that a European team failed to win a place on the podium, signaling perhaps that French bread is no longer very French. Some of the breads were available to taste, though I couldn’t manage to squeeze through the throngs to try the U.S. team’s. I did snag a piece of a Japanese brioche made with green tea and citrus that was sweet, and oddly green. It stood out just like some other jaw-dropping displays at the trade show. I took a couple of modest bites. It tasted kind of weird.

A couple of years later, Zakowski was still baking on his own but he did lose his backyard bakery. The lack of permits finally did him in. He’s now baking at a friend’s place in Petaluma and scouting other locations for his oven and shipping container, both of which, luckily, are portable. But he’s still competing, keeping one foot in the farmers’ market and the other in the Paris baking competitions.

 • • • 

A
s for my northern California sojourn, my last stop was Tartine, located in San Francisco’s Mission District and widely known for its bread, pastries, and lines out the door. I visited several times over a couple of years, making a point to stop in whenever my work took me out to the city. Chad Robertson, who bakes the bread, and his wife, Elisabeth Prueitt, who oversees the pastries, worked in France early in their careers and then set up shop in Point Reyes Station, a small town about ninety minutes north of the Bay Area, and baked out of a wood-fired oven. Robertson joined the ranks of similar-minded artisans—but he distinguished himself by baking alone in a tiny place with an oven built by the legendary Alan Scott, who had also made the Webers’ first oven. Robertson’s bread quickly gained notice locally. I actually tried it, in the late 1990s, when a friend drove me out to the small town; we stopped and picked up one of his dark, crusty loaves and a log of cheese from Cow Girl Creamery, then continued on to Tomales Bay. Around the same time,
Robertson appeared on the cover
of
The Bread Builders
, a classic book about bread making and wood ovens (and a must-read for bread nerds). But he still wasn’t known outside the region.

Eventually, the couple moved to San Francisco, helping propel the renaissance on Eighteenth Street in the Mission District, which has become a food-centric corridor in the city, with the locavore Bi-Rite Supermarket a couple of doors down, a handmade ice cream store across the street, and the Italian restaurant Delfina just next door. They grew into a more mature operation, with a full staff and a strong emphasis on prepared food served in a storefront café. Robertson also traded the wood-fired oven for a full-scale professional baking oven, with several decks, which was more practical in the city and, he argued, baked bread that was just as good.

Once the doors opened, however, demand for the bread soon got out of hand. Robertson had to resort to preorder reservations because the loaves sold out so quickly. “People would line up and then we’d run out of bread even before they got to the counter, so we had to do something,” he told me. One obvious solution would have been to bake more bread. But Robertson was limited by the oven, because pastries were baking during the day. He also wanted to avoid working at night. (The bakers began rolling in around eight
A.M
., which is when many other bread bakeries are nearly finished for the day.) To solve the problem of unhappy customers and lack of supply, Robertson rationed the bread rather than alter the schedule and boost output. When the loaves start coming out of the oven at five
P.M
., those with “reservations” are found in an orderly queue waiting for their loaf.

When I went to Tartine to meet him for the first time, I, too, lined up like all the rest to buy one of the sandwiches. I chose sliced ham and melted Gruyère on their thick-sliced country bread, which is the signature loaf made with
levain
. Luckily, the line did not take long and I also found a seat in the crowded café. My meal was delicious, the cheese melting around the crunchy and slightly assertive bread, the ham pleasantly salty, but I couldn’t finish it, because it was huge. Plus, I had a tart for dessert. It was a lunchtime indulgence out of proportion to what I needed, but, hey, this was work, and I had to investigate. As I ate my meal, I kept looking to the back of the shop, where I could see the oven and the bread bakers, a few feet behind the cash register. I soon spotted Robertson, wearing a T-shirt, and with a visor on his head. When I finished eating, I went over to say hello.

We shook hands and he showed me into the back where the bread was being made—the dough laid out like circular paving stones on a wooden table, resting before it would be shaped. I realized my timing was good: I might be able to jump in and shape these loaves, too, if Robertson let me. As we snaked from one part of the bakery to another, he asked me about the bakeries I had visited and the breads I was making. We soon pulled out our phones and were showing each other pictures of our loaves. This kind of camaraderie is quite common among bakers. Although many bakers I met were introverted, and interviews at times painfully spartan, Robertson wasn’t withdrawn. But he wasn’t blustery either. He was friendly, curious, willing to share. He also seemed entirely relaxed, though the place was hopping.

Then again, I was a writer who had come to visit with him—not a baker looking for a job. Richard Hart, the baker at Della Fattoria, who, it turned out, was itching to move on when I met him, told me later that he began pursuing Robertson at Tartine. “I sent him numerous e-mails,” he told me, “and I didn’t get one reply. So I baked him a bread, but didn’t hear anything. So I baked him another bread, and another, until finally I got a reply saying he liked it.” That was enough. Hart was soon working at Tartine on his day off, determined to get a job at the place the same way he had at Della Fattoria. Eventually he joined the staff.
Nathan Yanko, a distance runner
who was Robertson’s lead baker and a master of dough, told me he simply showed up at the shop after culinary school and got a job. It was his first baking gig, which might have been part of the attraction for Robertson: Yanko didn’t have anything to unlearn. There were many paths into this place.